Suddenly, the California Republican Party is as gay as IKEA on Super Bowl Sunday. Okay, not exactly.

Still, it was a momentous vote, when the California Republican Convention last weekend officially recognized its gay wing, the Log Cabin Republicans with “charter status.”

It’s a huge victory for conservative gay activists like state Log Cabin President Charles T. Moran, who told me after the vote, “I’m excited. Really, more than anything what this means is the Republican Party realizes and has affirmed the work we do to take our conservative message to disaffected Independents and Democrats to let them know they have a home in the Republican Party.”

Acceptance by the party’s base of activists comes after years of work by people like Ritch Colbert, former head of the Los Angeles Log Cabin chapter, who remembers how tough it was:

“People were always very curious about Log Cabin, but invariably we would encounter resistance — people who thought we weren’t really Republicans or that we didn’t belong,” Colbert says. “But it’s also fair to say there were supporters and people who encouraged us. . . It’s just that we never had supporters in sufficient numbers to become sanctioned and chartered.”

How GOP-gay marriage went bad: The Republican alienation of gays and lesbians never had to happen, says Frank Ricchiazzi, who co-founded the national Log Cabin Republicans in 1977. Speaking from his Laguna Beach home, Ricchiazzi recalls that at one time in California, “gays and lesbians were registering Republican” at the same percentage as the population.

Ricchiazzi blames the conservative activist group, the California Republican Assembly, for alienating gays. “We watched the state Republican party diminish in Republican registered voters because of the intolerance of the CRA and poison in the state Republican Party,” Ricchiazzi says.

But the weekend vote puts the state party in line with what many have known for decades: there always have been gays and lesbians involved in Republican politics, both as organizers and as voters. The party’s vote for inclusion removes much of the hypocrisy that pretends gays don’t exist in big numbers in the Republican world.

Consider that George W. Bush got 25 percent of the gay and lesbian vote in 2000, according to exit polls compiled by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

And even in 2004, when Karl Rove led the way in putting anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballots of 11 states, Bush still got 23% of the gay vote. Four years later, when nominee John McCain came out against same-sex marriage, it was despite his own Senate chief-of-staff being a gay man.

Fast forward another four years to Mitt Romney, who also opposed marriage equality, without mentioning that he ran for Senate against Ted Kennedy saying, “I’ll be better than Ted for gay rights.”

Grindr conservatives: Times have changed. At last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference annual convention, any talk about gay marriage was “a non-starter,” reported Time Magazine. Much more interesting at CPAC were all the people who were using the app for Grindr, the gay hook-up and dating site.

Reporter Paul Detrick of Reason TV tracked Grindr usage at the convention, and he even managed to interview a few of the many Grindr Republicans on camera.

When Jeb Bush was asked about same-sex marriage at CPAC, he would only say, “I believe in traditional marriage.” He didn’t mention that he had just appointed an openly gay GOP operative as communications director for his upcoming campaign.

Bush has also called for “respect for the good people on all sides of the gay marriage issue.” The fact is, Bush and every other Republican knows what the future looks like – that future being as close as 2016.

The Washington Post reported last week on “The most surprising gay marriage poll we’ve seen in a long while.” That’s the poll from NBC News and Marist College that shows half the voters in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina say opposition to gay marriage is “unacceptable” in a candidate.

Still a wedge issue? All of this theoretically might mean more LGBT voters could go Republican, especially since gay rights groups are clearly willing to support GOP allies. Equality California, the state’s most powerful LGBT political organization, gave a 100% score on gay rights to Republican Assemblyman Brian Mainschein and State Senator Anthony Cannella in 2014.

EQCA’s executive director, Rick Zbur warns, however, that with “Other members of the Republican Party using antiquated, offensive terms like ‘gay lifestyle and agenda’ to describe their party’s embrace of LGBT people, clearly we must continue education about equality across California and beyond.”

Zbur adds, “We’ve also seen Republican candidates continue to use our community as a wedge issue in campaigns just last year, so our work at EQCA is far from over.”

That’s a good note of caution, given the Republicans’ history, as the state party comes out of the closet to court its gay and lesbian members.

Hank Plante is an Emmy and Peabody-winning reporter who has covered California politics for three decades. He is also the Palm Springs Bureau Chief of Calbuzz.

]]>http://www.calbuzz.com/2015/03/gay-old-party-reflections-on-the-log-cabin-vote/feed/0Pigs Fly: CA GOP OKs Gay Republicans Clubhttp://www.calbuzz.com/2015/03/pigs-fly-ca-gop-oks-gay-republicans-club/
http://www.calbuzz.com/2015/03/pigs-fly-ca-gop-oks-gay-republicans-club/#commentsMon, 02 Mar 2015 08:01:26 +0000pjhackenflackhttp://www.calbuzz.com/?p=25297California’s Republican Party stepped into the 21st Century and onto the right side of history Sunday, with a landslide vote granting formal acceptance of the mostly gay Log Cabin Republican club within the state party.

After decades of excoriating gays and lesbians as moral degenerates, the California GOP approved a resolution at the Sacramento Convention Center to certify the long-embattled Log Cabin Republicans as an official volunteer arm of the party.

As a political matter, it was an important victory for state party chairman Jim Brulte’s efforts to rebuild, re-brand and restore the California GOP to relevance, by making its membership more diverse and breaking the political choke-hold long exercised by right-wing Republican advocates for inflammatory, out-of-the mainstream stances on social issues.

“It’s evidence they’re interested in increasing their voter base and moving in the right direction,” Kevin James, president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works and longtime Log Cabin member told Calbuzz later.

As a practical matter, the 861-293 vote by delegates, which set off a loud celebration by club members and their supporters in the hall, is largely symbolic – but no more so than past, bitter efforts by evangelical Christian Republicans to drive them out of the party; ex-Orange County congressman William Dannemeyer for years tormented Log Cabin at party conventions, once fighting for adoption of a platform that included references to “rimming,” “fisting” and “golden showers.”

Oh never mind: To be sure, the GOP move was modest, if significant.

To win a formal charter, leaders of the 38-year old Log Cabin had to submit more than 100-pages of paperwork and to revise their club bylaws to ensure they focused exclusively on furthering the Republican cause and did not violate party bylaws prohibiting recognition of organization based on “lifestyle preferences.”

And many Republican anti-gay activists argued against Log Cabin, on the floor of the convention center, in the Hyatt Regency Hotel lobby and hallways and in blizzards of late-night emails to reporters; some of these arguments were made on procedural grounds, others in the familiar rhetoric of those who consider homosexuality a biblical abomination.

“This is the very definition of moral relativism,” implored a woman delegate from Placer County. “God has absolutes beyond man’s ideas.”

Most importantly for those seeking full acceptance within the state party, its platform still explicitly attacks gay people: “We believe public policy and education should not be exploited to present or teach homosexuality as an acceptable ‘alternative’ lifestyle. We oppose same-sex partner benefits, child custody, and adoption,” the platform reads.

Because of party rules, changes in the platform can only be addressed at its fall conventions, one of two it holds each year. That fight likely lies ahead.

Tea Party Blues: While the big story coming out of the convention was about political moderation and increased tolerance, those searching for good old fashioned, rabid right-wingers did not have to look far.

The U.S. under President Obama, said panelist and Simi Valley delegate Steve Frank, “is like Nazi Germany in the 1930s – somebody is watching you.”

Obama “hates Israel,” Frank said a few minutes later, adding that the president “refuses to condemn terrorists.”

At one point, referencing recent comments by Republican has-been Rudy Giuliani, a Tea Party leader asked for a show of hands from those who believed that “Obama loves America.” Not a single hand went up.

The future lies ahead: As usual, the nonpareil social event of a convention weekend, and the toughest ticket in town, was the Dr. P.J. Hackenflack dinner, which once again featured a glittering collection of California’s top media hacks and political hacks, including such GOP luminaries as Bob White, Ruben Barrales, Bob and Linda Naylor. Chairman Jim even stopped by for a visit.

Dining at the fashionable Lucca on such delights as linguini and prawns, balanced with most of the alcohol west of Mississippi, guests participated in the closely watched Hackenflack Predictive Poll, a collection of the most astute future conventional wisdom from its most insightful practitioners and purveyors.

This season’s poll included three questions:

1-Who will finish second in the primary election for U.S. Senate in June 2016?
2-Who will be the Republican nominee for president in 2016?
3-Who will be the next governor of California?

SACRAMENTO — Speaking to the fervent believers of the California Republican Party on Saturday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie offered a muted paean to Ronald Reagan and presented himself as a humble but “passionate guy” who doesn’t fight just for the sake of fighting.

Faced with a choice of offering hot rhetoric to the crowd inside the hall or appealing to a broader, national audience, he chose the latter, presenting himself as a reasonable conservative (despite his well-earned reputation as a loudmouth bully) who would fight for principle and tell the people hard truths.

Specifics about those truths were absent in the address to the state Republican convention at the Hyatt Regency. Instead of policy, he offered personality, portraying himself as a sensitive son of a Sicilian mother and Italian father which made him “an expert at dispute resolution all of my life.”

He also told the story – oft-repeated throughout his career — of being told by his dying mother to go back to work because “there’s nothing left unsaid between us,” which brought tears and sighs from some in the audience. And his pledge to “fight for the fights that are worth fighting for” drew cheers.

It was an interesting bit of political ju-jitsu, trying to exchange his boorish persona for a softer image more befitting the avuncular, chuckling image of a sepia-toned Reagan.

At a time when he has declined dramatically, both in national and New Jersey polling, Christie was in California to revive his relevance, among activists and donors.

The most important message he had for California Republicans was not to line up behind a flavor-of-the-week candidate yet, noting that Reagan did not vanquish George H.W. Bush in the Republican presidential primary until May 1980.

“Take a deep breath everybody,” he said. “It’s 21 months until the election of our next president.”

]]>http://www.calbuzz.com/2015/02/christie-to-gop-dont-write-me-off-yet/feed/1GOP Confab Highlight: Condi Drinking Gamehttp://www.calbuzz.com/2015/02/gop-confab-highlight-condi-drinking-game/
http://www.calbuzz.com/2015/02/gop-confab-highlight-condi-drinking-game/#commentsFri, 27 Feb 2015 08:01:16 +0000pjhackenflackhttp://www.calbuzz.com/?p=25250Tony V has totally wimped out on California’s Senate race, leaving state political writers in desperate need of a story — and reduced to downing shots each time someone says, “I wish Condi would run” at this weekend’s Republican convention.

Sad but true: as the Calbuzz National Affairs and Social Activities Desk heads to Sacramento for the Republican’s twice-yearly celebration of bolo ties and geriatric activism, GOP fantasy figure and ex-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice represents the last, dire hope for them – and us! – to make the 2016 Senate election something other than a coronation for the state attorney general, Queen Kamala Harris.

As loyal readers know, Condi led the recent Field Poll of possibles to replace the retiring Barbara Boxer. Unless you’re just now waking up with a blackout hangover after celebrating the Seahawk’s historic Super Bowl choke job (ha!) for the last four weeks, you also probably know she has absolutely no intention of running.

Having signaled in every possible way her utter lack of interest in grassroots efforts to draft her for the gig, short of planting a sign on the 13th green at Pebble Beach, Condi seems content to wallow in her cushy sinecure at Stanford, instead of achieving, in one swell foop, the task of restoring Republicans to relevance in California.

Or, more importantly, in stepping up to do her duty to humanity, by helping out a couple of aging hacks yearning for one more good campaign to cover, before we go gently into that good night. Sniffle.

Witch. Why would she start caring about humanity now?

High atop the convention floor: While Kamala’s busy checking fabric and carpet swatches for her new digs in the Hart Senate Office Building this weekend, Dr. P.J. Hackenflack will oversee our vast convention staff as they work day and night to dig out answers to the five crucial questions at this weekend’s convention:

1-Will Brulte get flagged for “excessive celebration”? Since taking over as state GOP chair two years ago, Jim Brulte has done everything he said he’d do: paid off the party’s massive debt, restored it to the black and denied Democrats two-thirds majorities in the Legislature, while beginning to nudge Republicans back into the mainstream and out of the Twilight Zone of social issue obsessions. Brulte’s Saturday morning meeting with the press corps is almost always the best event at the convention, and if he doesn’t win a new term by acclamation, grassroots Reeps are even dumber than we think.

2-Will your Calbuzzards once again be the youngest people at the convention? Brulte’s done a good job of recruiting more women and minority candidates – admittedly, not all that hard, given how low the bar was to start with – but we’re still looking for the day the average age at one of these affairs falls below 85. Oh sure, there’s the loud, obnoxious College Republican drunks, but those guys couldn’t stagger through a precinct without falling down on the sidewalk; even their legendary hero, Jon Fleischman, is seriously starting to show his age.

3-Will Chris Christie fit through the double doors of the ballroom? New Jersey Governor, and quickly fading presidential wannabe, Chris Christie is what passes for the big name at the event, but given his recent embarrassing legal defeat over efforts to cut pensions in the Garden State, he might better spend his time sneaking across L Street from the Hyatt Regency to the Capitol, for a sit-down with Jerry Brown on how to manage public finances. Yeah, yeah, we know he’s lost weight – and God forbid we would ever take a cheap shot at somebody for being fat – but word on the street is that hotel management has its carpentry department on call, should they need to knock out a wall to squeeze Mr. Beef into the Regency Foyer.

4-Will immigration officials bust up Mia Love’s speech? The Saturday night keynoter is freshman Rep. Mia Love of Utah, a Haitian-American Mormon woman whom Republicans point to as evidence they’re taking diversity seriously. Love was elected last fall in a gerrymandered district after the local political press failed to follow up hard on allegations of felony hypocrisy brought forth by Mother Jones reporter Stephanie Mencimer, who disclosed the fundamental contradiction between Love’s round-‘em-up-and-move-‘em-out immigration stance and her very complicated family history. Anchor babies aweigh.

5-Who’s the press corps champ? The weekend’s big competitive contest will focus on who’s the last to face-plant in the guacamole in the Great Condoleeza Rice Drinking Game. Handicapping the field, it’s clear that Hearst Chron ranter Debra Saunders, ex-state GOP chair Bob Naylor and Dr. Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of KNBC are the early favorites. Betting tip: never lay money in a drinking game against someone with a PhD.

First we thought he wouldn’t, then we thought he would, now we just don’t care: As for the aforementioned dog-ass Tony V, aka former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the less said the better.

After doing a Dianne Feinstein-worthy Dance of the Seven Veils over whether to run for weeks, hanging out close associates by having them tell reporters it was a done deal and self-importantly basking in media attention as the world awaited his monumental decision, Tony simply chickened out.

Count us among those who won’t bite the next time he tries this, most likely a Hamlet play over whether to challenge Prince Gavin for governor in 2018. Take a hike, loser.

(Editor’s note: Due to an onset of utter idiocy, a draft version of this column containing some shady information was stupidly posted early yesterday for about five hours. We regret the error, along with many other matters in our lives).

]]>http://www.calbuzz.com/2015/02/gop-confab-highlight-condi-drinking-game/feed/0Field Poll Buzz: Condi vs. Kamala Dream Match-Uphttp://www.calbuzz.com/2015/02/field-poll-buzz-condi-vs-kamala-dream-match-up/
http://www.calbuzz.com/2015/02/field-poll-buzz-condi-vs-kamala-dream-match-up/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 08:01:21 +0000pjhackenflackhttp://www.calbuzz.com/?p=25232The new Field Poll, testing whether voters are inclined or not to vote for various individuals for U.S. Senate, is most significant for one reason: as a demonstration that Republican former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice could be a strong contender if she got into the race.

Compared to the rest of the mentionables, Rice draws the most number of respondents who are inclined to vote for her – 49% — more than all the others, including one declared candidate, Attorney General Kamala Harris, who pulls 47%.

Most important, this far in advance of the election — and with absolutely no indication from Rice that she’s interested in running — is that while 74% of Republicans say they’re inclined to vote for her, so too are 31% of Democrats and 54% of independents.

Harris, likewise, draws inclinations for 74% of Democrats, but only 10% of Republicans and 42% of independents.

In other words, absent any kind of campaign, which surely would give her plenty of solid whacks, the former cornerstone of the Bush-Cheney-Rice triumvirate would appear to be in a strong position to seek a seat in the Senate from California.

A lot stronger than the more likely candidate – Democratic former mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio “Tony V” Villaraigosa. Just 35% of voters are inclined to vote for him right now – 57% of Democrats, 12% of Republicans and 22% of independents.

Rice has told people that she is not interested in leaving her cushy job as Provost at Stanford for a shot at the Senate. She’d face inevitable questions about her private life and, of course, there’s the small matter of being a, uh, war criminal; alas, she’d probably have to give up her dream of becoming NFL commissioner. And when push comes to party, she is still going to be a Republican in deep blue California.

Despite her disavowal of interest, it wouldn’t surprise us if Rice now gets some pressure from national Republicans to take a more serious look at running: stealing a safe Democratic seat in California would be a fantasy come true for the GOP, a big play that instantly would give the GOP a huge boost in its effort to re-establish relevance in the state.

More grist for that argument: for the moment, when no one has yet laid a glove on her, 52% of whites, 48% of Latinos, 51% of blacks and 38% of Asians all are inclined to vote for her. For Harris it’s 42% of whites, 52% of Latinos, 78% of blacks and 41% of Asians. And while Villaraigosa pulls interest from just 26% of whites, 60% of Latinos say they’re inclined to vote for him, 62% of blacks and 23% of Asians.

The Sacramento Bee posts all of the Field Poll crosstabs here, if you want to check out all the mentioned potential candidates.

In the interest of having a story to cover, Calbuzz now is also rooting for Rice, along with Tony V, to get in the race. Not that she’d make a particularly good U.S. Senator. But it would be a hell of a contest.